Did you know? Only 11% of computer science (CS) undergraduate degree recipients in 2009 at major research universities were women. And, between 2000 and 2009, there has been a 79% decline in the number of first-year undergraduate women who say they are interested in majoring in CS. As a BOLD intern on the K-12 education outreach team this summer, one of my projects was to create a video that inspires girls to pursue CS. With the help of two other K-12 interns (Jackie Palma & Tessa Pompa) and our on-campus film studio, we produced “Girls in a Tech World: Endless Possibilities of Computer Science”.

We wanted to reach girls of all ages, not just those who are in the midst of choosing a major. Research shows that girls have many inaccurate stereotypes about CS that begin long before they reach college and also that they are rarely encouraged to pursue CS.

To cast the video, we sought out charismatic young women engineers at Google. Often, the way engineers are depicted in the media serves as a discouraging factor because girls look at the characters and think, “That doesn’t look like me …”—we wanted them to see role models who do look like themselves.

We recently pre-screened the video to a diverse group of 13-year old girls. They told us they found the video empowering and inspiring, which gave us the confidence and encouragement to post the video on YouTube and circulate it widely.

Check out “Girls in a Tech World” to hear awesome female engineers talking about why they love their jobs and their advice for you. We hope that this video will inspire girls all over the world, especially those who may have had misconceptions or felt discouraged about CS. Enjoy, and please pass it along!

10 comments
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Inspires or forces? I would love it if we had more females in CS, as it would mean that I could find a girlfriend, but after suggesting to many girls at my university that they consider CS and being told that they would never dream of it, I think that they genuinely are uninterested and that these programs constitute an attempt to force it upon them.

I really liked the comment of the woman who compared computer science to magic. That was my reason for wanting to work with computers: they were the closest thing to magic you can find in the real world. I encourage aspiring sorceresses to give the field consideration.

I am a female with a CS degree. I took my first computer class in 1982 in high school when no one knew that it was a "boy" thing. Half the kids in the class were girls. I fell in love with the logical problem solving of CS. I majored in CS in college and, again, half the kids were girls. When I went to work as a software engineer I met guys who were the least sexist of any industry I have ever heard about. They were brilliant from MIT, Georgia Tech, Harvard, Virginia Tech, etc. All they cared about was your brain and your ideas - they didn't care that I was a woman.

I am now a teacher of Computers in middle school. Students are required to take digital arts classes (powerpoint, word processing, web page design with HTML -not programming to me). But they aren't required to take computer science. So girls don't take it. They are afraid of the boys knowing more. However, when I teach 6th graders Scratch, the girls are just as interested as the boys.

Let's make at least one programming class and one hardware class (what is the difference between the CPU and the hard drive) mandatory for all students. Then they can all experience it. I bet more girls would go into the field.